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Monday, August 6, 2012

In Defense Of Semantics, Or: Until You Can Say What You Mean, You Cannot Mean What You Say

Semantics matters. In a debate, it is all
that matters. What matters when you’re talking with someone is what
you mean by what you say, and what the other person takes you to mean by
it. That’s what communication is.
If I could just project my thoughts into your head all at once, my
choice of words and the order in which I arrange them wouldn’t matter.
Words wouldn’t matter. But I’m not a dolphin, so I have to use
language if I want to communicate.

Language
is a social behavior in which symbols such as sounds or gestures are
agreed by participants to denote entities in the world. The symbols are
arranged according to structural guidelines of temporal progression to
denote larger concepts in an organized way. Thus, an image of a concept
is projected from the mind of the speaker into the world for listeners
to observe and replicate in their own minds. This process is called
communication.

The
success of the project of language depends on two things: syntax and
semantics. Syntax, the rules by which symbols are organized to denote
more complex concepts, is ultimately a servant of semantics. It allows
for the communication of thoughts far deeper and more intricate than the
mere vocabluary. But it
has no purpose whatsoever in the absence of semantics.

In
natural language, “semantics” is a set of correspondences, some between
symbols and the things they denote, and others among entire sentences.
For instance, the relationship between the sentences “math is exciting
and challenging” and “math is challenging” is one of semantic
entailment, because the meaning of one entails the meaning of the other.
Suppose I formulate the following sentence and speak it aloud: “Oma
cabeca djorglesnuff.” Even if you know all the rules of the syntax I’m
employing, my utterance will be completely useless as communication
until I explain somehow that by “oma” I mean “cats”, by “cabeca” i mean
“eat”, and by “djorglesnuff” I mean “mice”. Only then can you
understand what I’m trying to say, and respond with something equally
meaningful that moves the discussion forward. You can identify my
declarative sentence as a specific claim. “My oma,” you might say to
me, “does not cabecca djorglesnuff. I think you’re wrong to say they
do.”

And
here we’re at a point where the two of us might start “arguing
semantics”, because the next thing I say is, “I didn’t mean that all oma cabecca djorglesnuff. I only meant that some
oma cabecca djorglesnuff.” “Ah,” you say to me, “then you’re correct,
but you should have specified that when you were explaining what you
meant by ‘oma cabecca djorglesnuff’ in the first place.” And you are
perfectly right to call me out on that.

Why? Because the sentence “some cats eat mice” entails the truth of different sentences
than does “all cats eat mice”, and if I didn’t provide you with the
tools to determine which sentences my utterances entail, then my words
haven’t sufficiently meant and I’ve done a poor job of communicating.

Consider the following conversation.

A: God exists.

B: No he doesn’t.

A: Yes he does, and I can support my claim. Behold!

A holds up a spoon.

B: What does that have to do with God?

A: It is God. See? It exists. God exists.

B: You think that God is a spoon?

A: Well... yeah. That’s what I meant by “God”. You’re not going to argue mere semantics with me are you?

B: You bet your boots I am.

The
above two cases are perfectly legitimate grounds for substantial
semantic disputes. In both cases, one party has done a poor job of
communicating, and the other rightly asked for more careful formulations
of what is to be projected through language. In the first case, the
failure was a matter of ambiguity. There were multiple propositions the
speaker might have intended to convey, the distinction between the
possible propositions was significant, and thus the misunderstanding was
not the fault of the listener. What the speaker actually said did mean something,
but it didn’t mean as much as it should have. What it meant was not
precise enough for the purposes of the discussion at hand. He did not
mean what he said, because he did not say what he meant.

In
the second case, the speaker meant by his words something outside of
the standard, agreed-upon set of entities that might be denoted by them.
The reason the word “God” is mostly useless in discussions with people
who are used to attending to fine conceptual distinctions is that the
standard set of notions to which God might be taken to refer is very
large and poorly defined; not only is there ambiguity, there is
vagueness. But in the case of a spoon, using the term “God” causes more
confusion than usually comes with even that word. The speaker did not
mean what he said, because he did not say what he meant. If A were to
say “God exists,” and B were to say, “I think so too” but take “God” to
mean “a porcupine”, the listener would also be making the same kind of
mistake.

So you see, the more accurate and careful we are with our language, the more intricate, interesting, and useful
will be our communications, and the more worthwhile will be our
debates. Clarity matters. Precision matters. Sensitivity to semantic
distinctions is a valuable skill, as is the diligence to attend to them.
When philosophers argue semantics with you, the purpose is neither to
annoy you nor to show off. It’s to actually get somewhere
with the conversation. If we’re asking for precision and clarity,
we’re doing so because we excel at identifying problems that derive from
a lack of these, problems that would lead to frustrating, tiresome
spirals of self-perpetuating confusion.

There
are important things to learn from people who shatter your semantic
endeavors and ask you to rebuild them from the shards. Developing the
patience to face down the linguistic challenges of philosophers will
lead you to wield language that is sharp and strong as the edge of a
samurai blade. And if you choose instead to dismiss such attempts at
careful communication as tiresome nitpicking, do not meddle in the
affairs of philosophers, nor seek what they have sought.

If you’re too lazy to say what you mean, how are you ever to mean what you say? And why should I believe that you do?